Look at them futures soar. DJIX up +378, SPX up +47.90.

Wow wasn't expecting that this morning. :)

Still not complaining.

I mean, the bankers who caused the crisis live to see another day, the Moral Hazard created is astounding.

THANK GOD IT PASSED!!!!!

That was over a year ago.
At that point the debt became part of Greece overall debt (of which bank bailout is only a fraction).

So any moral hazard that existed took place a long time ago.

At this point the question is will IMF/EU save Greece debt which is a all together different moral hazard.

Seriously, moral hazard, atop of moral hazard atop of moral hazard.

What is AIG trading at today? That one is the one that annoys me the most. The firm has no equity and is still trading as if it did.

The bankers tend to put money into the markets.

even if that were true that didn't happen today.

:rofl:

Seriously, who owns that debt? I don't have any Greek bonds laying around or Spanish or Portuguese.

Oh that is right, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman, and the rest of the club.

They think that they are safe with those bonds they will pour their money back into the market.

This is like AIG trading with actual value. One day, the Ponzi goes boom.

:rofl:

and I stand by what I said, this is a fucking ponzi scheme that was given new life by a bailout scheme that will blow up bigger in our faces.

I remember all the happy thoughts people telling me what a small country Greece was.

Seems that small country required a 700 billion Euro bailout fund to be created for the Eurozone.

I was right than, I'm right now.

with signicant portion to shore up the balances of the most embattled countries.

and when we spoke of Greece I always said Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal were next.

700 billion Euros is about 1 trillion dollars for now, though I wouldn't be surprised for the Euro to slowly reach parity with the dollar.

Their central bank not behaving like the Federal Reserve was one of the selling points of their currency as a means of international exchange.

I think the next place the markets punish is domestic, and involves the large debts of certain states in the US

Particularly New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey.

Would you buy CA debt for $1.00 face value? I sure as hell wouldn't.
So higher yields and lower face value on CA debt is reality. If you aren't will to buy it for par then why should anyone else?

The markets are only "punishing" reckless and irresponsible accumulation of debt. God help us if we (federal govt) bail out CA if/when they default on a bond.

Or just a reckless abandonment of the constitution.

There is no way the US Senate passes a bailout for any US state. The partisan not to mention other considerations would be ridiculous.

If you are Iowa or even Pennsylvania who has been reasonably responsible with your spending, there is no way your Senators, can vote and stay in office to reward a state who has been irresponsible.

Now I think "something" would have happened however I never would have thought that "something" would look like TARP.

If it were me I would save the banks as institutions.

Create a quick resolution authority to wipe out shareholders & bondholders, nationalize assets, pump cash into banks to keep the afloat then after crisis wind it down by splitting the banks, dumping worthless assets, and reselling issuing new share to private money. Turning profit on shareholder money, and breaking banks up at the same time.

I honestly in my wildest imagination would have thought the "rescue plan" would be a massive weatlh transfer from taxpayers to shareholders aka TARP.

It is owned by the banking cartel, who will destroy us all.

I worked in Financial Services. There are two things that prevent these people from being absolute sociopathic monsters

1) Fear of going broke
2) Fear of imprisonment.

From where I sit both fears do not exist right now, and I expect the result to be devastating.

Or just a reckless abandonment of the constitution.

There is no way the US Senate passes a bailout for any US state. The partisan not to mention other considerations would be ridiculous.

If you are Iowa or even Pennsylvania who has been reasonably responsible with your spending, there is no way your Senators, can vote and stay in office to reward a state who has been irresponsible.

Or just a reckless abandonment of the constitution.

There is no way the US Senate passes a bailout for any US state. The partisan not to mention other considerations would be ridiculous.

If you are Iowa or even Pennsylvania who has been reasonably responsible with your spending, there is no way your Senators, can vote and stay in office to reward a state who has been irresponsible.

What is in place to prevent it from happening, just this way, all over again? I'll tell you - NOTHING.

All the nations are scrambling to cover the bad bets of Wall Street banks. Eventually it comes full circle.

:evilgrin:

Not a much as I wished though hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

However I did win a lovely piece of moderately expensive art at a raffle so I guess the Universe plays out. I gave it to my mother for mother's day.

$10 raffle ticket for a $4500 piece...can't beat that return on investment

I've been talking about investing with my twelve-year-old son. And he decided last week that he wants to take $100 of his savings and open an online trading account (a custodial account to mine). The day he puts his money in the market -- KABOOM! So last week my boy learned the meaning of the phrase "intestinal fortitude." Investing isn't for the feint of heart!

That might actually help him in the long run. People who invested post87 had really no concept of what a real correction looked like until 08. As a result they took on a lot more risk and thought they were comfortable with that level of risk. Having some major move to the downside helps one re-evaluate where they stand on risk vs. reward spectrum.

Lots of studies have shown peoples belief on their acceptable level of risk is far riskier than what they are willing to accept when it is real wealth being lost.

In sixth grade but taking eighth grade math.

Next Week: Fundamentals Analysis!

... pumping a lot of air into the economic balloon.

All the Wall Street gamblers think this is going to be a very big party -- just look at the size of the pretty balloon!

But, no one knows how to turn the compressor off ... so the balloon will burst.

Interest rates slowing economic growth.

The question isn't how the question is will the FED (and other central banks) have the guts/balls to use it.



They did at one time. Jacking interest rates to 18% to deflate the bubble was very unpopular. Imagine trying to buy house at 16% mortgage rate, or being a senator and learning T-bonds will cost the govt 15% interest.

It worked though. Broke the back of inflation.

The defaults are still going on, and this is not exactly the economic growth of the 1980s.

6% decline in the first quarter of mortgage defaults was a good sign, but it was 6% off the worst of the default rate of the crisis.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=chart+of+GDP+growth

From 1974 to 1984 we had 4 of 10 years with negative GDP growth in real terms.

and our GDP is still declining.

Recovering economies don't lay off teachers, college proffessors, and nurses at a large clip.

The point is we have the tools to deal with asset inflation it is acalled monetary policy.

The real question is will the FEDS have the guts to stick with as much interest rate hikes as necessary to keep economy under control?
They did in the 1980s but I am not sure they will today.

Still we are a long way away from inflation right now. That is more a 2011 concern.

as I do in skittle shitting unicorns.

The fact is with our central banks, there is no Paul Volcker sitting behind the desk.

Bernake has pretty much missed everything in the initial phases requiring an expensive and socially damaging major reaction time and time again. Past results predict future performance from that guy in my opinion, but hey even a blind squirell may find a nut from time to time.

Woohoo:woohoo::eyes:

China, Japan, US, EU (all major national markets), Korea.

I am sure Latin American futures are up as well but I don't get quotes for them.

For the most part, the markets are controlled by, run by and benefit the already wealthy. Sure, we get a few crumbs, but for the most part it's a rich man's game.

Second of all, the stock markets are a rigged game, and have been for over twenty years or more. Between collusion, various schemes to beat the market, the PPT and other entities designed to influence the market, it is clear that it is a rigged game. Individuals such as you and I can also play, but you've got to know what you're doing.

Third, it really doesn't reflect what is going on in reality. Exhibit A: Take a look at a particular company's stock when they lay off people. The stock generally goes up because such a layoff promises greater profit. However such layoffs actually weaken our economy. These sort of actions where the market goes up on people's misery are quite common, and really repugnant if you think about it. Your stock goes up on the misery of the many:woohoo:

That doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't get into the markets, but one should know what you're doing first of all, and secondly, one should not just invest intellectually, but also morally. I've got shares in various "white hat" investments, companies that actually have ethics. The funny thing is that white hats are not only good investments for our world, but do rather well in the financial world. While other companies and investments were crashing and burning a couple of years ago, my portfolio grew and has continued to grow since then.

Sorry, but I just find these sorts of market divinations rather disingenuous at best, repulsive at worst. You simply can't read much, if anything into them other than the fact that companies are, for the moment doing well. But only for the moment. As far as trying to link the health of our economy to the fluctuations of the market, well, it was stupid when 'Pugs were doing it with the Bushes or Reagan in office, it is as equally stupid to do when a Dem is in office.

Usually it's the Asian markets that tell us where things are going...that's where many of the recent crashes have occured and reacts first to pending bad new in the US market. During the Euro crisis, it's been quite stable...mirroring our markets in moving up and down within 5% but not doing the wild rides we saw a couple years ago. All the turbulence has been based in European markets that seemed to have little affect on the Asian markets and now it appears their situation has stabilized (for now) that brings the buyers into the market. The Dow still has about 1,000 points to make up and looks like it may be on the way to doing so.

Of course AIG, Freddie, Fannie, and Citigroup to name a few should have 0 equity.

This market is the biggest ponzi scheme ever created. It got another 3 months of life breathed into it. This will not end well.

Or then will it be another 3 months and another 3 months and another 3 months?

Eventually even is someday it does go down 1000 points over 3 months the market will be up so much that the correction will still never get back to your doom & gloom baseline.

The ridiculous actions that will be taken by central bankers to prop it up. All I do know is those ridiculous actions will eventually bite said central banks in the ass.

If we were doing basic fundamentals, that did not involve a government picking winners and losers, I'd be 100% correct.

No further intervention, 3 months. Of course, that is not the reality. I really don't know if there is an ideology to describe this mixture of communism, capitalism and fascism we have going on.

I just call it pure insanity.

Thus for every BofA going bankrupt there would be another more financially sound bank picking up the slack and buying BofA assets from FDIC at wholesale prices.

and that is the way the system was designed to work.

Here is the deal, when GM went the proper route eventually, the CEO of GM got on a private jet out of detroit with a majority of his E-suite.

Has this happened with the bigger banks?

Sure Ken Lewis is gone, but his underlings, the people giving him advice, still are hanging around the rotten corpse.

If there's one thing we've seen with the hearings...especially into Goldman Sachs is that these people create "wealth" out of nothing...or less than nothing. With "consolidation", I saw many companies that detached their earnings from their stock prices...manipulating the market through mergers and acquisitions and stock dividends and other games all while taking more debt that eventually stiffed the stockholders when the bubbles burts. Some were obvious to see but many were papered over and stashed away in the still confusing derivitives netherland. They called the manipulation the market working on "emotion"...but it's being revealed slowly how this was, as you say, a ponzi scheme.

The thing is this game was far more widespread than real estate. That was a magnet as so many were using rising real estate prices as their piggy banks, but this game went on in many other sectors as well...and why when the bottom fell out so did their stock prices and have led many to head toward bankrupcy...more jobs lost, more savings squandered. And, yes, there's more to come.

The ultimate hedge these days is that the investment world truly is global and the smart investors find the best deals wherever they can...and many have headed out of the stock market as it's rivaled the commodities markets as being volitile. That doesn't mean it still isn't a casino and that will continue until some serious reregulation and real enforcement takes hold. Seeing how this economic reform bill is going to drag on into the summer, I don't see any big changes for a while.

Cheers...

IMO the market is trading far too unrealistically and doesn't reflect our current financial situation as it once did. Ups and downs based on rumors, fat fingers and meddling is dangerous.